


Be Not Afraid

by roughmagic



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Bottom Dante (Devil May Cry), Complete, DMC4 or Later (Not That It Super Matters), Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fantasies About Gore, Friends to Lovers, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Half-Angel Reader, Hand Jobs, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Oral Sex, Other, References to Bayonetta Lore, just guys bein' dudes, what's better than this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:08:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: It’s breeding season for Dante, and a friend from work happens to be around to help.Reader/Dante
Relationships: Dante (Devil May Cry)/Reader
Comments: 10
Kudos: 145





	Be Not Afraid

It’s still cold, well past the new year’s beginning and just before the first spring thaws will take, and even in the city that means something. Mostly for the storage of winter clothes and the migration of birds, but just like all cycles: it means something for demons, too. 

Dante’s old enough that it doesn’t sneak up on him anymore. When he’s paying attention. 

Hunting the waves of small fries surfacing in dark corners of the city is almost second nature for him, and having you along for the ride turns it into something done for fun. The way your powers and his naturally clash feels like running with scissors—the only thing that might seriously injure the two of you are each other. 

Rebellion sings through cold air just as easily as it does demons, and it’s only when an errant spray of blood lands hot on his face that he seems to surface out of a reverie. The alley around him is trashy, trashed, and familiar, another unfortunate demon engaging both your attention and your weapons. 

There’s a sudden sensation inside him of fruit dropping off a bough, emotional and physical. Dante can’t picture saying anything cool enough to explain what’s up, so he does the next best thing and leaves when your back is turned. Leaving a fight midway is the same kind of bad manners as stopping a dance before the song’s over, but there’s no accounting for nature. 

Even more than that, there was never a handbook for a half-demon going through heats. Dante’s dealt with it since the Love Planet fiasco of his youth by locking himself in his room and cancelling any jobs until it’s safe to emerge. So that’s just what he does now, locking the shop doors behind him before he retreats to his room. 

His room smells the same as it always does, just more. Stuffier, dirtier, littered with clothes and the weird detritus that builds up around demon hunters. Opening a window isn’t a good idea, and it isn’t as if a breeze would cool him down. 

As soon as he’s hung up his holsters and his coat, he stops to listen to the frustrated door noises coming from the front of the shop. It’s either a client, a stupid demon who caught his scent, or you, and he’s not sure which would be the worst to deal with. 

The lock breaks and there’s some splintering when you kick the doors apart, and Dante sighs to himself as he braces his bedroom door against his back. “Dante?” 

He keeps quiet, but it’s hard for either of you to hide in a meaningful way from each other. Before long, you knock on the door, right between where his shoulders are on the other side. “You need me to hold your hair back while you barf?” 

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. He lets his head rest against the door, trying to keep quiet and not let his imagination run away with him. 

“I brought a gallon of water and put some freezer pizzas in your fridge. Will you knock twice to let me know you’re not dying?”

Dante sighs, rapping his knuckles twice against the door behind him. “As usual, you’re too good to me.”

“I’m aware.” Deliberate, thoughtful silence. “I can smell you trying not to jack off.” “

His stomach jumps hopefully before he can stop it—your tone is decidedly not impressed or identifiably lustful. “Okay, well, I was _trying_ to be polite—”

“And I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have to be.” Gold light punctuates the edges of the door frame, and Dante feels the oppressive Paradiso energy through the wood like he’d feel the sun through cloth. It just lasts a moment—you never escalate things with him, it’s normally just to remind him that you are what you are, and that you aren’t scared of him.

Maybe it’s that, the idea that he can’t intimidate you, or just hearing some iron in your voice, but Dante can practically feel his mouth start to water. You should, you kick down the door and sort him out, even if it’s just to beat his ass with that obnoxious holy power until he comes down or comes to death. Either’s good. 

The light and the strength from your voice has retreated, and you sound quieter, closer to the door. Like you might be leaning on it, like you would be pressing your face to his back if you could. “You’re not the only one who gets… weird.”

“Oh, angels have breeding seasons too?” He scrambles to joke about it before he can seriously consider the implications. “I always pictured you guys laying eggs and then a big angel blesses them and a bunch of baby angels hatch. Like fish.”

“The only difference between angels and demons is branding, Dante.” Ah, now you sound a little annoyed. Back to equilibrium. “I was trying to have a moment of vulnerability with you, by the way.”

“It was touching. I’m touched.” 

You’re quiet again, choosing your next words. “I almost beat off here. In the bathroom, last spring.”

Dante makes an involuntary noise that sounds enough like _huh_ for you to keep going, 

“I came around for your help getting demon parts for Rodin, and it just… got to me. The seasons were changing and you just danced through every danger. All I wanted was to roll in your bedsheets and wait with my hips in the air until you found me.”

Dante knows he should say something, acknowledge that you’re taking a risk with their friendship, but he’s going to be chewing over that mental image of you for a while before he can be coherent. If he’d _known_ … 

“I thought it would be awkward. So I locked myself in my hotel room and slept under a cold shower, and it was awful, and I’m trying to spare you that. And it’s not like you aren’t stupidly attractive, and we’re friends, I hope—”

“Okay.” He jerks the door open and the two of you stand there, staring at each other. It should be easy and normal, but it’s not. “If things get weird, just… put a sword through me.”

“Impalement as safeword, got it.” It’s only half a joke. He knows you can and will, and it’s a relief. More than he had expected, although that was what had kept him going through these seasons alone: how could he trust himself with a human who’d have no chance of defending themselves?

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “No big deal. Just friends being friends.”

You nod, maybe too much. “Totally normal peer bonding experience.”

“Uh,” Dante’s mouth goes dry just looking at yours. “Synergy.”

It wouldn’t be accurate to say you jumped him, as the two of you seem to rush each other at once, kissing immediately without much style or hesitation. Now this is easy, almost to the point where it feels normal-- it’s not like he doesn’t think about you like this. Fighting, either alongside or each other, it’s always felt to him like you were just a few steps away from slotting together and sticking his tongue down your throat. 

The reality of it is better, because you’re sticking your tongue down _his_ throat. It goes without question that he follows when you drag him down to your level with a fist in his hair for a better angle, your other hand digging nails into the small of his back. 

You shove and pull and crowd him into moving back, further into the room, Dante almost stumbling. He has to pull away to speak, out of breath. “How’d we not do this sooner?”

“I don’t know, we’re stupid. Mostly you.”

“Hell yeah--” He grins, only to make a complaining noise when you push him back to his bed, all but tossing him on it. He forgets you can do that, and an unfamiliar prey instinct makes him go still and pliant. The reflexive part of his ego that sounds like Vergil is complaining about him, the son of Sparda, ready to roll over and take it from some angel half-breed, and his heart hammers even louder at the thought. You could rent him all around town and if it got you off, he’d do it. 

You kneel between his legs and he feels his blood rush around in a frenzy in response, only just swallowing back whatever it is he wants to confess to you—mostly that you could do anything to him and he’d love it, how good it feels to be in your hands and at your mercy. 

“Could you take your shirt—” It’s off, only one shoulder seam popped in the almost split-second process. He’s got other shirts. “Wow.” You smile and he shrugs, maybe trying to retain one last vestige of coolness. 

It lasts maybe a moment before you plant one hand on his chest and use the other to start dealing with his belt buckle. You squeeze his tit hard without being asked and Dante arches under it, thinking a whole stream of impossible bullshit that normally doesn’t hit him until the very middle of sex: _milk me, dig your fingers in and grab my heart like Indiana Jones, tear a handful of me off—_

“Are you alright?” Your hand jumps off his belt-buckle. “You made a bona fide porn noise.”

“I know exactly how stupid I am,” He’s even panting while he says it. “And this is unusually stupid.”

A bunch of feelings rush over your face, finally ending in something kind of embarrassed. “I’ve only, ah… been in season with someone else once. But it was more intense than it had been when I was by myself.” You finish with his belt and tug his pants open, zipper growling.

Dante makes a questioning noise, which was clearly different in every way that mattered from a whimper. Definitely not related to a whimper. 

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

It’s a strange, conflated fantasy: Dante can imagine you underneath someone, someone wringing you out just like you’re doing to him, the visions of your submission and submitting to you ones with equal strength.

“But… she really took care of me.” You finally finish with his belt, dropping it off the side of the bed with a thunk. “And now I’m going to take care of you.”

The anticipation is enough to choke him, and he can’t help but make a sound when you finally press your hand to the front of his jeans, weight and heat enough to make him try to push up and into the touch. 

He can see himself at your mercy, maybe just dry humping through the entire thing—if you kept staring at him like that, kept your hand gently kneading him through the denim, it would be enough. He’ll grind himself raw if you let him, and you seem more distressed by that idea than he does.

“Dante,” you insist, your hand drifting away. “Say something? I’m worried I’m overstepping a boundary.” 

“You’re not,” he gasps, suddenly taking in breath after having let it all run out. “Step on them. Me. Don’t stop.”

You make a face like you wish he wouldn’t joke about that, but you roll the heel of your palm against his cock and it stops being a joke. He’d like that, your boot against his dick and nothing else, he’d have to work to come under you.

“I’m not letting you cream your jeans like that.” You move to unbutton your own pants and he grabs for the closure, struggling against wanting that more than anything in the world, and knowing it would be too much, too fast. If you sat on his dick he knew in his heart he would cry from relief, and he’s not really ready for that. 

“Hands. Hands, or,” The mattress shudders as he does, toes curling in his boots at the sound of his own, wrecked voice. “Suck me.”

“No problem.” You look into his eyes deeply for just one second, your hand briefly pushing back into his hairline like a cold breeze. Dante feels his guts drop out at the thought of you anchoring your hand and pulling his hair, only to jerk back to earth in time with his hips as you finish unzipping him, tugging too gently to try and get enough space to get at his cock. “You wear your pants so tight, jeez.”

His hands aren’t steady enough, and it turns into too many cooks in the kitchen as he tries to help, but you do it eventually, and he gets to see himself twitch in your hands, thick and proud and ready, God, he’s never been so ready for anything in his life. 

You shift around and crawl between his thighs, one leg falling off to the floor entirely with a heavy thump and he likes that, he likes he’s got something to push against, something to help him lever his hips up and get to you. “Dante?” Your voice is so soothing but urgent, like he’s in danger and you want to help, and he can’t help but imagine it run through with little veins of need, that you aren’t unaffected by the show he’s putting on. “I’m not… an expert at this, so I’m sorry in advance.”

Dante chuckles handsomely, but it comes out as more of a whining gurgle. _Honey_ , sits in his mouth, _babe, sweetheart, you could chew on me like beef jerky and I’d still nut in your face,_ but it was a stupid thing to think right before you put your mouth to him—the image of you _eating_ him, his blood down your neck and wet on your chest, your fingers sinking into his hot, tight guts pulls at the devil in him in a way nothing else had yet. Would that freak you out? That would definitely freak you out. Maybe one day. Maybe if this doesn’t completely scare you off. Coffee date and he’ll bring it up real casual, _Think you might like to eat my liver, baby?_

There’s definitely something Promethean about how heavy his limbs feel, how trapped by gravity against his own stinking mattress he is while you lick at him so gently, conscientiously sucking precum before it rolls completely off the head of his cock, breathing through your nose to keep your mouth as full of him as you can. It’s good, not the most artful blowjob he’s ever had, but he wouldn’t appreciate any advanced techniques anyway. Just you, your tongue and your mouth and the threat/promise of the tips of your teeth, your hands covering what you can’t take, your breath fanning against his skin.

Dante reaches to try and cup your face and very nearly sticks a finger in your eye. “I’m close, you can leave it to me, I’ll—” It’s not going to be dignified, and you shouldn’t have to.

Your mouth lifts off him and he almost wriggles at the temperature difference, going very still suddenly as you don’t move away, a bead of spit moving on a bridge between his cock and your lips. “I want to.”

Your voice is a little hoarse and deeper with an unconscious confidence, and for a moment your eyes are in the middle distance somewhere near his navel, not looking at him or anything, and Dante has to clumsily cinch a couple fingers around himself to keep himself from coming on you—you _want_ to suck him off, you want it so much it’s gotten into those deep nonhuman instincts and he wants to submit just as bad. He’d roll over and let you fist him—he’d roll over and _beg_ you to fist him if he didn’t want you to finish him off. 

“But, I—” You snap out of it, face flushed and apologetic, eyes bright and focused on him again. “Sorry, I just meant, I _can_ , but if you don’t want me to, that’s alright!” 

“No, no, no no no, go for it,” Dante has to stop a moment and rest back on the pillows, before looking down at you again. “Sure you’re not… allergic to demon cum?”

Stopping to weigh that thought, he can almost see the scales tipping in your mind. The few instances it had been shed, your blood scalded each other. He’ll have to try licking your tears at some point. For science.

“Whatever.” You pull his hand away and press a long, open-mouthed kiss against the underside of his cock. “Worth it.”

Dante laughs, and his mouth doesn’t close again, hanging open for him to pant and then moan as you go to town again. The long muscles in his thighs twitch and he doesn’t know how to warn you so he just reaches, grabs weakly for your hair. He listens to you, to himself, to the sound of his body at your mercy. 

A brief crackle of demonic energy leaks out of him and you flinch. The strobe of Paradiso energy you reply with smells like candles and flowers and fresh blood, his skin heating like a sunburn and the round shape of a halo or something burned into the backs of his eyelids. It sits on him with weight, something to struggle against, something telling him to stay down. He’s in his place, and you’ll pin him, fuck him, tear him up, tear him apart, whatever he gets, he’ll say thank you.

A shout lights out of him as he starts to come, only to break off suddenly when his back arches, body silent and clenching as he comes in your mouth, your throat, shaking. He can hear you breathing hard and struggling to swallow but you stay, you stay on him until he’s finished. He only barely bites down on a cry when you pull away from him with a noise and sensation like you’d taken him as far down as you could and turn to the side as you cough violently. 

“You okay?” He asks, feeling suddenly thoughtless and vulnerable, but you wave a hand, shake your head, smile at him with watering eyes.

“I’m good. Just. Spicy.”

Dante flops back, boneless and sweaty and still wearing most of his clothes. “Jesus.”

“What about you?” You crawl up to lean over him, and Dante feels a miserable twitch in his dick at your concern, at the thought of you curling up with him and giving him a moment to shove his face in your neck, breathe you in. “Talk to me, big guy.”

He slings a forearm over his eyes so he doesn’t have to maintain composure. “Pretty sure I lost ten years of my life blowing that load.”

You clear your throat, hands gingerly patting his chest. “Can I make you more comfortable?”

“Hm?” 

“Your boots, at least.” 

He feels your weight shift off the bed, taking with it a warmth he didn’t know he needed. You’ve already gone above and beyond the call of duty, he should clean himself up, let you escape. “I can do it.”

“I don’t know if you can, actually.” He feels, rather than sees you wrestling with his chaps to get at his boots, picking apart the laces’ knots and yanking on the tongue to wiggle each boot off. “Well, that’s how it was for me, anyway, I didn’t want to move much.”

“I’ve slept in my boots before.”

The last one is set on the floor with a thump, and you sit down on the side of the bed near him, running a hand across his chest again. “I know. And I know it’s stupid, but… can I do it, for me?” He has to look at you for that one, caught off guard by how genuinely soft your voice has gotten. The yellow light from the hall and the blue of the night outside play over you and make your expression hard to immediately place. “It’s nice. It’s like I’m redoing it. Reliving it, but I can do things right this time and not have a total meltdown.” 

Dante’s imagination runs away with him and he pictures you in your hotel room’s bath, cold shower spraying you at the bottom. Only your hands to touch you, no one else there, eaten up by shame and loneliness. He pushes himself up with more effort than it ought to take, placing his face adjacent to yours, two objects in space not yet touching. 

“Hearing it out loud, that’s pretty selfish.” You say it too quietly to really be a joke. 

“Do it right, then, with me.” He bumps his nose against yours, brushes his mouth against your lips, gives you all the warning he can before he has to kiss you. You don’t pull away when he does, but he has to reach up, cup your face, touch your neck, coax you into believing it. 

He likes working at it, convincing you with his body that it’s alright, likes the idea he’s getting a chance to almost do it over. No one left alone this time. He can taste his own salt briefly on the inside of your lips and makes a deep noise into the kiss. Too guttural to be human. 

You pull back and Dante wants to lick at your mouth like a dog, just to be a nuisance. “I’m taking your stupid chaps off.”

“You love my chaps.”

“They’re coming off.” 

It’s a two-person effort, but Dante shows you where the fasteners are and lays back, letting you wrestle him out of the leather, out of his socks. The denim jeans underneath are muggy with sweat, and he feels the chill all over his body once he’s naked. It’s entirely worth it to feel his bare skin on your clothes. 

He’s hard again by the end of it, turned on but how gentle you can be, and also the way you don’t mind yanking and tugging to get at him. How your hands and eyes move over him with appreciation and no fear. His dick is almost glued to his stomach before you clean him off, just warm water on your hands and some lube. It almost hurts to be this sensitive again, but you move slow enough to turn the ache into wanting.

It takes some embarrassing mutters and deliberate arranging of you, but he gets what he finally wants, in reverse. You’re propped up against the headboard and he gets to lean back into you, push his face close to your chest where he can smell that weird heaven undertone the same way he can scent hell on himself. He places your hand curled around him, fingers buried in his hair and your other gripping his dick, legs tangled. His body’s too big to make this anything but awkward, but you hold him tight, pull his hair a little and breathe hot against his temple. 

“You’ve thought about this,” you say, not as a question. Dante bucks softly into your hand as you start stroking him, testing direction and pressure and trying to find what he likes. 

“I wanted to do this to you,” He groans, hips moving against your slippery hand and relishing the noise the mattress makes with both your weights on it. “Still do. Just… improvising for now.”

The surrender feels as good as he thought taking care of you would be, letting himself rock and be rocked, full of small and helpless noises he didn’t know he could make. It’s not as violent this time when he comes, tensing around you and in your arms before letting go to real, deep relief. He sighs and jerks through painting cum all over his stomach, and you let him lay and breathe for a moment before you wipe him down with your shirt.

He can smell your arousal and that kind of sharp edge to it that makes him think your taste would have a bite in his mouth, but you pull his hand away when he goes for your pants. “Later, okay. You look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

“No way,” Dante groans, limp while you push and pull him to stretch out farther on the bed, your arm under his neck and the pillow soft behind that. “I never leave a lover hanging.”

“The only hanging I’m doing is hanging around.”

“You better.” Something about that catches in his throat and he has to follow it with something more casual. “Gotta pay you back.” 

“Just go to sleep.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my drafts for a while, and I got a burst of inspiration to finish it up, although I feel like I'm arriving late with iced coffee. 😂


End file.
